Did somebody say “contest”?

Yes! There was a contest here: Devise the worst centennial theme paying tribute to the births and other events of 1910. Even with three juicy crossword books offered up as prizes, there were only 11 (!) entries. I guess not everyone thought this was as captivating an idea as I did. Thanks for playing, all 11 of you!

Without further ado, the winners:

#1. DadofTwins went with the beautifully inconsistent “1910: The Year in Produce.” KORN isn’t a vegetable, PEARS is plural, GREEN is missing the plural it needs, and CHERRY doesn’t appear at the end of its entry (plus CHERRY BLOSSOM isn’t a person). Good themes have parallelism, and this one absolutely doesn’t have it, and doesn’t have it in spades.

CHULALONGKORN (13)—[King of Siam, died October 23]

PETER PEARS (10)—[English tenor, born June 22]

EDITH GREEN (10)—[Oregon congresswoman, born January 17]

CHERRY BLOSSOM (13)—[Japanese tree, first given to U.S. January 28]

#2. Alex grouped three people with the same birth date. Tight theme! You know what else unifies this theme? The completely non-intuitive spellings of these non-household names. Why, including just one of these surnames in a grid could be enough to sandbag a puzzle submission.

MOTHER TERESA (12)—[Noted figure born 100 years ago whom the Phoenix New Times once described as a “heartless, self-serving thief”]

Please join me in congratulating our winners for their exceptional badness. Millions of people can come up with lame, unusable themes, sure, but it takes real talent to deviate from crossword conventions in an entertaining way.

Hey, suck-up vote? I assure you, those entries were all enjoyably bad in their own ways! I think hanging chads would improve your chances, in this case.
I’d also think ineligibility would only result from actually being a viable theme (Orange? Don’t mean to step on your zest here).